


but the desert is made of light

by themorninglark



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Azure Moon ending, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21802990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: “Ah, and here I was hoping so naively that you wouldn't be too hard on me, like I asked…”Dimitri pauses, runs a hand through his hair. Claude is leaning against the balustrade, the fading light brilliant bronze upon his cheek. He’s wearing days-old stubble and a tunic that’s seen better days, but he is smiling, in spite of everything. Dimitri isn’t even sure whateverythingis, right now. He, with that strange sweetness still lingering in his mouth; Claude, standing here in the flesh.In which Dimitri goes to Almyra, reunites with an old friend in a strange new place, and takes his next step forward.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 39
Kudos: 337





	but the desert is made of light

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set the post-canon world of the Azure Moon route, with Claude's own future based on Verdant Wind. Please note there will be spoilers!

_But the desert is made first and foremost out of light, at least to the eye and the heart.  
_\- Rebecca Solnit

The night the professor asks him about dancing with Claude, Dimitri dances with moonlight instead. Still clad in his ball regalia, his feet bare. His is the only lord’s room without the trappings of a carpet. In Faerghus, he is used to cold floors even in the summer. They make him feel awake.

Claude likes the carpet, because it silences his movements. He had told Dimitri that once, leaning against his open door. _I’m not coming in, Your Highness. Your floorboards creak too much. I’d never be able to sneak up on you, and where’s the fun in that?_

It is the moonlight that tickles his toes, makes Dimitri extend one foot and step into a waltz. All the same, Claude and an armful of light, Claude and what remains of the sun. Teasing shadows that slip from his grasp. In the morning, Claude will rest an arm on Dimitri’s shoulder and say, _you didn’t save a dance for me last night. I am undone!_

Dimitri opens his mouth, starts to say, _but I did._ Claude is already turning to leave. Many years later, Dimitri will watch him walk away again, just like this, and think of dancing.

The next time he sees Claude von Riegan, it is late autumn and Dimitri’s lips are sticky with honey.

He was born to this, he reminds himself constantly: velvet upholstery, ten different forks and spoons and knives at his supper table, and dessert spun from some minstrel’s dream. Peach currants are so sweet this time of year even he can taste them. They are more and more vivid these days, the tastes of things. He had sat at that very table before he turned two, placed his hands in his lap and learned to be a prince. He should be at home here. None of the trappings of royalty are new to him. Only perhaps, now, he is new to them.

The weight of the king’s robe has barely left Dimitri’s shoulders when he sees, beyond the half-open curtains, a bright flicker on the railing outside that winks out of sight. He moves closer, one hand dropping to the dagger at his hip, and then the intruder turns.

He is a sunset sight clothed in gold and Dimitri’s grip goes slack, like all the breath in his chest. He pushes the curtain aside, and steps out.

“It’s been a long time, Your Kingliness,” says Claude.

“How did you get on my balcony? Where's Dedue?”

“Ah, and here I was hoping so naively that you wouldn't be too hard on me, like I asked…”

Dimitri pauses, runs a hand through his hair. Claude is leaning against the balustrade, the fading light brilliant bronze upon his cheek. He’s wearing days-old stubble and a tunic that’s seen better days, but he is smiling, in spite of everything. Dimitri isn’t even sure what _everything_ is, right now. He, with that strange sweetness still lingering in his mouth; Claude, standing here in the flesh. There are dark circles under his eyes that were not there in their schooldays. Or maybe they were, and Dimitri had just never looked closely enough. It has taken many years for him to learn the art of stopping long enough to look.

“You look well, Claude,” he says, at last.

Claude shakes out a sleeve. A stray leaf falls from it, lands on Dimitri’s balcony where a crisp wind picks it up and dances it away. “Ever the kind-hearted one. I've been flying all day and I look like something Priscilla dragged in.”

“Priscilla?”

“My wyvern. You remember her?” Claude’s smile grows fond, and familiar. He tilts his head back to glance towards the courtyard. “Dedue's helping to feed her right now. Good man, Dedue. Took one look at her when I landed and asked me to leave her to him.”

Dimitri doesn't know what to say to the extraordinary pronouncement that Dedue's apparently in on this scheme to have Claude infiltrate the royal palace.

“Anyway. I’m here to officially present you with this.”

Claude reaches into his tunic and pulls something out. He gives it a rueful look before handing it to Dimitri. “Sorry, it got kind of crumpled on the way here.”

Dimitri takes the gilt-edged card, framed with burnished vines reminiscent of antlers. He unfolds it and does his best to smooth out the creases. _His Majesty Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus_ is written on the front in a flowing, graceful hand. It looks nothing like Dimitri had imagined Claude’s penmanship to look like. When he turns it over, the back reads: _Your presence is graciously requested at the coronation of Claude von Riegan, King of Almyra._

He lowers his hand, and looks up at Claude. “Your dream. This is what you were talking about.”

Claude leans back, arms crossed. Dimitri looks at the card again. “Are you hand-delivering all your invitations? That seems like a great deal of trouble.”

Claude laughs. “You think too highly of my work ethic. Just this one. I left Hilda a note and slipped out. She'll have my hide when I'm back.”

Far beyond the towering buttresses, the night is beginning to cover Fhirdiad, a slow, faithful whisper. Dimitri feels the chill, standing out here without his cloak. If it were not this late, he would have invited Claude in. If it were not past the hour for decent visitors, if he had not been about to pray and turn in early.

“Your reply, Your Majesty?” Claude asks.

It had seemed so unnecessary to Dimitri to give it voice. He had forgotten he had not said it yet. “I’ll be there. Of course I'll be there.”

Claude bows deeply, and Dimitri hastens to step forward, put a hand on his shoulder. “Don't do that. You don't have to, you're a king now—”

“Not quite yet. The crown has yet to touch a hair on my head. Indulge me this while it is still proper for me to bow to you, Your Kingliness.”

“Dimitri.”

Claude grins. “When we meet as kings, I'll call you that.”

With that, Claude sweeps himself off the balcony in one fluid motion. Dimitri strides over to the balustrade just in time to see him land light and sure-footed, a vision against the forbidding white flagstones of the patio below. He turns to look back up at Dimitri, places one finger on his lips and starts to make his way towards the stables, where Dedue presumably has Priscilla watered and fed.

He is gone before Dimitri can get over stupid proprieties, to reach out and catch Claude on the elbow and say, _at least stay the night_. He could have done that. He could have done that much. It would not have been unseemly, for him to offer a bed to an old friend who has flown this far to see him.

But Claude has slipped through his fingers again. A gleaming shadow. That night, Dimitri leaves the card propped up on his dresser before he goes to prayer, and finds sleep a gently elusive bedfellow.

❦

“Have you ever been this far east, Your Majesty?”

Dimitri, astride a fresh steed of House Goneril’s, takes a rare idle moment to contemplate the fact that Hilda might be the only person he knows who could say _Your Majesty_ and make it sound like _Dimitri_. She rides easily beside Dimitri at the head of the column, a golden ribbon in her hair.

“I don’t think so,” Dimitri says. “Certainly never past the Throat.”

“Ooh. Little old me, getting to be your guide into Almyra! How exciting!”

By now, the Locket lies a few well-trodden leagues behind them. Dedue, who has never been at home on a horse, is accompanying the rest of the royal retinue at the back of the pack on foot. Dimitri had brought only as few attendants as he could get away with, without seeming indecorous on a visit as important as this, but it’s still too big a group for his liking. He murmurs to his horse, digs his heels in and breaks into a canter, Hilda right behind him. Overhead, her wyvern calls out and swoops down low.

And so it is that Dimitri’s first encounter with Almyra smells like freedom, and wildness, and sand kicked up into a brave, balmy wind that sweeps through mountains. He has to close his eyes for the barest of breaths. When he opens them again there is an oasis at the mouth of the valley surrounded by palm trees, a sudden, glimmering glimpse of blue that makes him shield his gaze with his hand.

“Welcome to Almyra,” says Hilda. She is beaming as she leaps off her horse, and beckons Dimitri towards the oasis. How strange, thinks Dimitri, that he should live to see this day, when a daughter of Goneril leads the way into Almyra with a smile, and the piercing cry of a wyvern sounds like hope.

❦

In Almyra, autumn is sultry in a way it would never be in Faerghus. Dimitri is certain that the Fhirdiad climate has never heard of _sultry_ , and would dismiss the very idea out of hand as unbecoming and wanton should he even attempt to speak it to the wind. While he is here, he hangs up his coat in one corner, where it will remain untouched for the rest of his visit.

Yesterday, a man with a pinched expression on his face and a furrow on his brow had appeared at Dimitri’s door shortly after their arrival, introduced himself as Marshal Josephus, and proceeded to take Dimitri on the official royal tour of the palace and the surrounding grounds. Dedue had observed afterwards, mildly, that the Marshal seemed to be having trouble with his vision, as he had been unable to look Dimitri in the eye.

“Some people,” says Claude, “still aren’t so comfortable with the idea of the King of Faerghus being an honoured guest in our country.”

At Claude’s insistence and over and above the protests of his well-intentioned captain of the guard, they are having breakfast in the annex to the main dining hall, a room where there’s only room enough for four and the guards have to stand outside the closed doors. The window offers a rare view of the olive grove near the ballroom. Claude slides Dimitri a cup of chamomile tea, along with an apologetic smile.

Dimitri accepts the former gratefully and waves away the latter. “I understand.”

Hilda spears her croissant with her fork as if she is wielding an axe, and scowls. “You don’t have to make excuses for him, Claude. He’s just a grumpy old bigot.”

“I’m afraid I’ve inherited this grumpy old bigot as prime minister, so be nice.”

Dimitri looks from Claude to Hilda, then back. “Hilda’s not your prime minister?”

“ _Hilda_?” Claude manages to choke out, before he sputters on his own mouthful of coffee, at the same time Hilda makes a strangled sound of disgust.

Dimitri feels a flustered warmth creeping up his neck. If there were any glass surfaces in the room, he’s half-certain he would have caught a pink tinge on his reflection. As it is, Dedue’s poker face is more than enough of a mirror. “I beg pardon. What office do you hold, Hilda?”

“Office? Oh no, Your Majesty, as if I want to do all that _work_.”

“The office of being Hilda,” is Claude’s illuminating contribution.

Hilda puts an entire half a croissant in her mouth at once. “Anyway,” she says, spraying crumbs with abandon, “I bet old Joe gave you the most boring tour in existence. There’s so much cool stuff to see around here. Want me to bring you on a wyvern ride?”

“I think I might get sick,” says Dimitri, sincerely.

“And what a start to our diplomatic relations that would be,” Claude remarks. “Still, you’re probably right, Hilda.”

He takes a bite of a pecan pastry and licks his fingers slowly. Dimitri feels his gaze on him, and when he looks up, Claude has a familiar gleam in his eye that has never portended well. “What are you doing this afternoon, Your Kingliness?”

Dimitri glances over to Dedue, who says, with remarkable gravity, “I believe you have an appointment with Claude. I shall go through the letters from Fhirdiad while you are occupied with matters of state.”

“You can ride my wyvern,” Hilda offers, “since Dimitri is too much of a wimp.”

Claude laughs then, a bright, unexpected full-throated laugh that startles Dimitri, and Dedue cracks the most imperceptible of smiles.

❦

The alleyway smells of sand, as the air in Almyra so often does, but there is something more mingled in the scents that waft down this narrow passage. Frankincense, jasmine, something like citrus that makes Dimitri think, incongruously, of summer. They had come here through the back entrance of the palace, the servants’ entrance, and Dimitri had felt compelled to offer abject apologies to the guards pretending most studiously not to see Claude using these passageways. But Claude had walked blithely through as if he belonged there, and so Dimitri, squaring his shoulders, had done his best to follow.

The further they get from the palace, the more the smells change. So does the music: jangling coins, snatches of flute and folk song on the wind, the language of the street, a loud, discordant cacophony that sounds to Dimitri like a night at the opera crossed with a particularly lively war council.

Claude is humming under his breath, softly enough that if they had been anywhere other than a deserted alley, Dimitri would not have heard him. He wonders if Claude intends for him to hear. It seems unlike Claude to do anything unintentional. But framed in warm sandstone and incense like this, a melody on his lips that sounds like a tender memory, everything about this Claude right now seems more accidental and real than Dimitri has ever seen before.

“Here we are. I wanted to show you this,” says Claude, coming to a stop at the end of the path. Dimitri squints into the sunlight on the wide open road.

He blinks, eyes widening, and everything is so bright he would blink again but for the deep and wholly irrational conviction he feels right then that if he closes his eyes, the vision before him might go up in a puff of smoke when he opens them again. There are too many colours spread out before them to possibly exist in one place, too many scents, hares and pheasants hanging from rods side by side with bushels of leaves and herbs and berries Dimitri doesn't even have a name for. People are shouting in at least four different languages. He doesn't know where to look, so he looks at Claude, who is smiling like he doesn't know he's smiling. Dimitri looks away.

“Is this… a street market?”

“Not just any street market. Feast your eyes on the true crown jewel of Almyra, the souq of the Great Colonnade,” says Claude, with a hint of reverence that vanishes as soon as he turns that smile on Dimitri, and winks. “Or, as I like to call it, my childhood home.”

Dimitri shoots him a glance, eyebrows raised. Claude clasps his hands behind his back, takes a deep breath, and sighs. It is a sigh, thinks Dimitri, that he knows the timbre of; the sigh of someone who wishes with all his heart that he could freeze a moment long past, who thinks, if he had had the presence of mind to do so back then, he could take it out of his pocket now and breathe upon it, watch it unfreeze and live it all over again.

“I practically grew up here—well, when Nader wasn’t dragging me by ear into the archery range. It was the one place in Almyra that was so… so colourful, I suppose, that no one noticed or cared about where I was from. I felt like myself here.”

Claude takes a step out onto the road, and looks at Dimitri over his shoulder. “Coming?”

Dimitri starts to nod, but Claude’s already turned and plunged straight into the bazaar. It is all Dimitri can do to even try to melt into the crowds like Claude does. Dimitri has seen him on the battlefield, a lithe thing that knows both the bright and dark of the mottled shadows beneath trees, who could be behind you as easily as he shows up in front of you without warning. It is only here that Dimitri begins to understand that war had not been his natural habitat. Claude belongs here, in the city, in the chaos.

 _Dress casually_ , he had told Dimitri. Dimitri, who had packed nothing casual in his trunk and is not sure he owns anything casual in the first place, had had to make do with his plainest white tunic and trousers which look to him so unmistakably Blaiddyd blue he is certain he will be set upon any time by an angry anti-Fódlan mob. But he is overthinking it, it seems, or Claude had been right about no one noticing or caring where he comes from, for everyone ignores them.

Trailing behind Claude, Dimitri feels too big, too noticeable. But then Claude stops in front of a stall where some spicy-smelling meat is grilling on skewers along with big chunks of pineapple, gleefully buys two questionable kebabs and hands one to Dimitri, and bursts out laughing when Dimitri, eyes watering, says he can’t taste anything. Seconds later is when it hits the back of Dimitri’s tongue and his throat, and then Dimitri cannot help but laugh too. How funny, that food should make him laugh now, how funny it is to taste things so very vividly they make him cry and then laugh, and that Claude’s mirth makes the flavour even more joyous.

Claude keeps stopping at little stalls selling all manner of things, from piles of fruit that look like they’ve been out in the sun too long, to trinkets rusted the colour of a desert rose. He makes a point of constantly bargaining, but in the end, Dimitri notices, he always slips a little extra to the merchant.

As they wander deeper into the market, Claude touches Dimitri on the arm and whispers when Dimitri leans in. “Stay close to me.”

Dimitri, a warm flush pricking the back of his neck, is about to open his mouth to ask why when he feels a rustle at his hip. He whirls around, one arm whipping out before he has time to think about it. His hand closes around a skinny wrist, and he hears an anguished yelp that would have made him let go, if not for the fact that the owner of said wrist has turned out to be a mangy boy with a scrape on his cheek and Dimitri’s coin pouch still in his hand.

Claude surveys the scene, crosses his arms and lets out a low whistle. “Well, well. What have we here? You have much better reflexes than I thought you would.”

“I asked Ashe to teach me a few things, once,” Dimitri admits. “Things I could never have learned on the throne.”

The boy is shaking in Dimitri’s grip, but he looks up to meet Claude's searing gaze with a defiance that Dimitri can't help but admire. Claude plucks Dimitri’s pouch from his hand and taps a finger against his chin. “What shall we do with you, our little thief?”

“Be kind to him, Claude.”

Claude sighs. “I suppose I have no choice but to listen to the victim here.”

The boy, wide-eyed and gaping now, has been staring at Claude since Dimitri said his name. “Are you King Claude?” he asks.

“Aren’t you smart.” Claude reaches out and ruffles his hair. “You must be hungry. Come on.”

Some crusty bread, an apple and two kebabs later, Claude has the boy hanging on his every word. When they reach the end of the food stalls, Claude bends down so they are at eye level and says very gravely, “Merin, my new friend, I have to introduce you to this man here whom you so bravely tried to rob. His name is Dimitri. He’s the king of Faerghus.”

Merin’s head snaps up. “Aren’t you a _bad guy_?”

“I’ve been called that,” Dimitri murmurs.

“See, I’m _really_ good friends with him. That means Almyra is friends with Faerghus now,” says Claude.

Merin looks unconvinced. Claude plows on blithely. “This is a good thing, because there are more apples in Faerghus than in Almyra and if they didn’t so _generously_ give us so many, I wouldn’t be able to give you this.”

“Technically, we’re trading them—”

“Shhh,” says Claude, reaching up without looking to lay a hand on Dimitri’s arm, and Dimitri shushes. He watches as Claude reaches into his satchel, produces an apple with a flourish and holds it out to Merin, who takes it after a while. The boy’s still staring at Dimitri like he is a man out of a fairy tale, and not the nice kind, but when Claude stands up and slings one casual, easy arm round Dimitri’s shoulder and Dimitri doesn’t respond by stabbing him in the back, Merin appears somewhat mollified.

He takes a bite of the apple, bobs his head to Claude in an awkward approximation of some kind of bow, takes off through the narrow, winding streets and disappears round a corner. Claude remains where he is for a moment longer, leaning into Dimitri, arm resting comfortably round him. Dimitri has carried the weight of others before. He had done so for more years than he cares to count, and it had always been a penance, a repentance that aged like a bitter wine and weighed more heavily as the years went by. The weight of Claude is different. Companionable. Pleasant, even.

 _Friends._ Dimitri turns the word over in his mind. It is an open flame that flares brilliantly, beckons to him with a warmth that he does not know how to embrace. Once, it would not have been so difficult. Once, there was a time he would have known what such a bond meant, would have believed in it with a whole and unbroken heart.

He is still mulling over it when Claude stops in front of a travelling merchant sitting cross-legged on a colourful woven blanket, with all manner of accessories spread out on it. Claude bends down, and money changes hands. He straightens, and holds a leather cord out to Dimitri. “A little something to commemorate your first visit to a street market.”

The cord looks simple, but close up, Dimitri can see it is intricately etched with vines in bloom and plump little berries. A flowering. It feels appropriate to the occasion.

“Is this a gift of state?” Dimitri asks.

Claude raises his eyebrows. “It’s a gift from a friend, you dolt.”

He takes Dimitri by the hand and loops the cord round his wrist, tying it off in a loose knot. Later, Dimitri will tell Dedue he is dressing himself tonight, put on a long-sleeved formal tunic and keep the cord tucked under one cuff, where it is close to his skin and no one else can see it.

Alone in his guest chambers, he sits at the foot of the bed and opens his trunk. There is a bundle inside wrapped in leather, one that has been on his mind since he packed it and set off from Fhirdiad. Dimitri has not taken it out till now. He does not dare, even, to unwrap it now that it is sitting on his lap. If only he had something of Claude’s skill of gifting, to know how to give a thing without feeling like he might put his foot in it.

He runs a hand over the shape of it, puts it back into his trunk, and stands up to go to dinner.

❦

Ignatz has been painting a picture of Claude, at his insistence, and Dimitri is perfectly aware that for all his carefully cultivated appearance of selfish whimsy, Claude has always been powerless to deny his Golden Deer anything when it comes down to it. Dimitri knows this as surely as he knows where the sun will rise and set. One House Leader to another. He cannot say his memories of Garreg Mach are all happy, but being House Leader is something he will never quite forsake, and neither will Claude.

So it is that after Dimitri composes his replies to the letters from Fhirdiad and gives Dedue directions for Ingrid on the preparations for the Holy Kingdom’s Founding Day, he takes a walk and passes by the sitting room, where the doors are slightly ajar. From within, a voice says, “My nose itches.”

“Too bad, Claude. Put up with it.”

“Ignatz Victor! Is this how you talk to a king!”

“You're not a king yet, and I have to finish this by your coronation day. That’s _tomorrow_ , in case you’ve forgotten! Now stop twitching. Do you want to look ugly in your official portrait?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, I could _never_ look ugly.”

Dimitri knocks lightly. He cracks the door open a little more, so Ignatz’s easel is visible from where he’s standing. “I hope I’m not intruding. Hello, Ignatz.”

Claude beams when he sees him. “Your Kingliness! Will you scratch my nose for me?”

Ignatz's brush slips. He makes a wild stroke across the canvas and is mid-wince in horror as he turns, leaps off his stool to his feet and bows to Dimitri. “Dimi—er, I mean Your Majesty! Please disregard everything that just came out of Claude's mouth!”

Dimitri nods at Ignatz, and glances over to Claude with a smile. “Your artist has spoken. You have my sympathies, though.”

Claude gives him a plaintive, wheedling pout, but Ignatz picks up his brush again and glares at him. “Claude, please sit properly.”

Claude, after an indignant huff, deigns to assent. Dimitri lingers for a moment, and watches as Ignatz paints in Claude's mouth, a hint of a smile with his lips half-parted, like he is about to tell you a secret, or extract one from you. It could go either way. Dimitri looks up at the real thing, and makes his exit when Claude catches his gaze, still smiling.

❦

The day Claude von Riegan is crowned King of Almyra, Marianne prays the rain away.

She will quietly deny it later, say that it was all the Goddess and nothing of her. That even here in Almyra, where faith is found only in the unlikeliest of places and the choirs sing no songs that she knows, the Goddess smiles down upon Claude’s coronation. Dimitri dances with her, after she has been appropriately cajoled by Hilda and reassured—also by Hilda—that Dimitri, in spite of his boarish appearance, does know his right foot from his left.

Claude and Judith had been the first on the dance floor, and Dimitri and Hilda second. “You'll be hot property,” Claude had said to him with an outrageous wink, before the ceremony. Dimitri had not found the words to tell him, before a retinue whisked him away to get ready, that he very much doubted anyone would be hotter property than Claude on this day, on this night. Now that they are here, and Claude is a king in name, as he has been in all other senses of the word for probably much longer than Dimitri knows, he finds he still does not have the words to ask Claude for a dance.

Dancing has never been his strong suit anyway, even if he can hold his own enough to come close to graceful, at times. As he hands Marianne to Dedue with a bow and earns a rare smile from her in return, he stands on the sidelines and watches for a moment before he makes his way out into the courtyard. Outside, where the sky is still cloudless, he can breathe easier. When he looks back into the hall, Claude is leading a waltz on the dance floor, and he is laughing as the music builds to a jaunty crescendo and then fades away.

Had he looked like this on his own coronation day? Dimitri remembers so little of it, on hindsight. What he remembers is the weight of the full regalia, how his robe had never felt so heavy, how, when he picked up the sceptre of Faerghus and held it with both his hands, all the breaths he had ever taken settled deep in his chest and curled around his heart, like a sigh that would never quite leave him. Claude wears the sash of the Almyran king not like someone who was born to it, but like someone who had to fight his way to it and take it. He is all the more resplendent for it.

“Stealing away, Dimitri?”

It is the sound of his name, more than anything else, that makes Dimitri whirl around. On a night that should be all his, a clear, balmy night with the promise of warm, life-bringing rain in the morning, a night as far away from the frigid Faerghus nights of the Red Wolf Moon as could possibly be, Claude is walking out of his palace and into the olive grove, towards Dimitri.

“I’m not much for dancing, to tell the truth.”

“Could've fooled me. You were so awfully dashing on the dance floor. Didn’t you know, back in the academy when we had that ball, how _everyone_ wanted to dance with you?”

“They did not,” says Dimitri. “They wanted to dance with Professor Byleth.”

“Okay, point. But also you.”

Claude reaches up and plucks an olive, pops it in his mouth and hands another to Dimitri. It is sharp and earthy and tastes like a ripened truth. Against all his self-preservation instincts, Dimitri speaks. “Dancing reminds me of Edelgard. She was my first dance teacher. When we were children.”

“Ah,” says Claude, softly. “She was a good teacher, then.”

“She was.”

Claude stretches his arms lazily overhead, crosses them behind him and tips his head back in a gesture so familiar it tugs painfully at Dimitri. He looks up too, following Claude's gaze towards the slivered moon.

“Do you still carry the weight of your dead, Dimitri?” Claude asks.

Dimitri shakes his head. This much, he can be resolute about. “No. I made a promise, a long time ago, to let them rest.”

Claude's gaze flickers to Dimitri, curious, appraising. It is a gaze that's always made Dimitri feel like he's one step behind. But then he smiles, and that regal, radiant smile is a much quieter thing out here.

“I’d like to visit Edelgard one day,” says Claude. “Wherever you laid her to rest.”

Dimitri stares. “How do you know—”

“You are too good a person to leave someone behind. I'm living proof of that.”

Dimitri has no rebuff to this, no armour to hide behind. The wind rustles in the olive trees above them. It sounds like a prayer, like forgiveness. Behind them, the musicians have started up the next song.

“You should go back,” says Dimitri. “Before Hilda comes to look for you. Or worse, Lady Judith.”

Claude stretches again, laces his fingers together and shakes his shoulders loose with a sigh. “How I wish you weren’t so sensible. Kingly duties are _exhausting_.”

Dimitri smiles. “They are. I will return with you, if you like.”

“No, you should rest—”

But Dimitri holds his arm out, and Claude, after falling silent for a moment, takes it without protest.

❦

_I need to see you about something important._

It had taken Dimitri a frankly embarrassing amount of time to write this note, and even longer to decide what to do with it. Protocol dictates he should have sent an official request for an audience, by way of a designated emissary, and it would have taken place in the throne room under the watchful gaze of at least ten guards and officers from both nations.

In the end, Dimitri had slipped the note to Hilda, who had pressed it into her bodice and laughed when Dimitri blushed. Claude's reply, in his flowing handwriting, had come under the flask of mulled wine served to his room that very same night.

When Dimitri makes his way towards the wyvern pens the next morning, Claude is already there. He is simply dressed in a plain brown tunic, and looks for all the world like a wyvern herder instead of a king.

The leaves crunch underfoot. It is too early for the groundskeepers to have made their rounds yet. As he walks over to Claude, Dimitri reaches behind him and unstraps the oversized leather-wrapped bundle from his back. It sits awkwardly in his arms. He had never held with as much grace as Ashe, let alone Claude, but Ashe had returned it to Dimitri’s safekeeping after the war, saying it deserved better than an innkeeper.

Claude turns at Dimitri’s approach, one hand still idly stroking Priscilla's head. “Say good morning to Dimitri, my love.”

Priscilla makes a huffy noise and folds her wings in a way that Dimitri will take as a welcome, for now.

“I have something of yours,” says Dimitri, without preamble.

Claude's gaze drifts down to the bundle in Dimitri's arms. His eyes widen, and Dimitri, at last, unwraps the precious cargo he has brought all this way. The bow in his hand seems to gleam as he takes it out, lets the dewy morning light fall on its body. It had felt so heavy in his trunk on the journey to Almyra, but here and now, in his hand in front of Claude, it feels light as a sunbeam.

“Ashe used it, for a time. He said it was one of the bravest bows he'd ever drawn. He said you would know what that means.”

“I sure do,” says Claude. “She’s a fearless beauty, that bow.”

Dimitri holds Failnaught out to Claude. “Now that things have settled down for you, I think it's time I gave it back where it belongs.”

Claude raises his eyebrows. He moves closer, but stops short inches away from Dimitri, and folds his arms. “Oh, Dimitri. You wound me. Would you do me this dishonour of returning my gift?”

“No! But it was never mine to keep. All these years—”

Claude's sudden touch is warm. He closes Dimitri's fingers round the bow and lowers his arm without ever touching Failnaught's body. “All these years, I have put my faith where it is best placed. I think I have something of a knack for that, if nothing else.”

“But—”

With surprising gentleness, Claude takes hold of the leather skin and wraps Failnaught up again. He pats the top of the bundle as the bow disappears from sight and rests his hand on Dimitri's shoulder. “Sorry to make you carry it all the way here and back.”

“You're not sorry,” Dimitri grumbles.

Claude grins. “I’m really not. You should put it to use. Next time I see it, I want it to be banged up and full of nicks and scratches.”

Dimitri holds on to Failnaught and stares at Claude. There is a levity to the tilt of his mouth that tells Dimitri, ironically, he’s serious. “I’m no archer,” Dimitri points out.

“Well, it’s yours now. Use it however you see fit.”

A familiar refrain, and from the way Claude says it, he’s fully aware too. Years have passed since he said these same words to Dimitri in Derdriu. They are under such a different sky now, a different dawn, one where the sun’s golden heat meets the deep blue of night head on, spreads daylight that Dimitri once thought he might never see again. In the slums of Fhirdiad, the sky is never this colour.

Claude takes Priscilla’s reins, leads her out of her pen and leaps up nimbly onto her back. “I’m going for a morning ride before the servants come and drag me to another dull breakfast. Want to come?”

“I was not joking,” says Dimitri, “when I told Hilda I might be sick.”

“Great. There’s nothing in your stomach right now, so I’ve caught you at the right time.”

He reaches down, grabs Dimitri’s hand and hoists him up with surprising strength, and then Priscilla takes wing and Dimitri can only hold on to Claude and close his eyes, and, after a while, open them to a sight he knows he will never be able to describe to anyone back home.

❦

That night, Dimitri lays Failnaught across his lap, picks up a cloth and starts to polish it, then thinks better. He stands up and goes to the archery range instead. At this time of night, he is the only one there.

He hefts the weight of an arrow in his hand, nocks it to the bowstring, aims and shoots. The arrow flies out and hits the edge of the target. Dimitri has never been a natural shot. The bow does not sit in his grip like a sword or a lance. But Dimitri shoots, and shoots, and shoots until he forgets he is there, until he runs out of arrows and Failnaught sings in his hand, _yes, yes, yes_.

Radiance, Dimitri knows, is not all it is cracked up to be. He is only awe-inspiring from a distance, from the top of a balcony. Up close, all the frayed places start to show, the parts of him that have been too long in the dark to ever truly shine again. He has been hiding them for so long. He does not know if he can ever be worthy of so much trust, but the best he can do is step off that balcony, let people draw close to him, and show that he has shored himself up against the ruins of all his old tragedies, built them all up stronger than before.

When he goes back to his rooms, he falls asleep immediately and wakes up just before sunrise, with the bow still next to him. It had slipped out of his grasp while he slept. Dimitri picks it up again, and raises it to the light streaming through the gaps between the curtains.

❦

He goes straight to Claude’s chambers after breakfast, and does so unaccompanied, unannounced. When the guards see him approaching, they cross their blades in salute and stand aside. Claude himself opens the door when Dimitri knocks.

If he is surprised to see Dimitri, he does not show it. He opens the door wider, inclines his head in formal greeting and stands aside so Dimitri can enter. It is only when Dimitri comes in and Claude has the door properly closed and locked that he lets himself flop back on his bed, let out an exaggerated yawn, and hold one limp wrist up towards Dimitri as he plucks at the lace on his cuffs.

“I have a grand idea, Dimitri. What if you put on all this frippery today and performed my royal duties for me.”

Dimitri sits on the edge of the bed and raises his eyebrows. “And what will you do?”

“Why, I could have so many adventures with Priscilla. Or I could take a nap. It’s hard to say which is the more appealing option right now.”

“Asking the king of Faerghus to govern your nation for a day seems like a dangerous idea.”

Claude props himself up on his elbows and grins at Dimitri. “Nah. Not if it’s you.”

“You have too much faith in me,” Dimitri starts, then stops. He clasps his hands in his lap and looks down. When he speaks again, it is measured, and they are words he has wanted to say for a long time, and he does not know if now is the right time to say them, only that his time in Almyra is coming to an end and if not now, he may never say them at all. “I don’t know if I would have put my faith in me, back then. In Derdriu.”

Claude sits all the way up, and comes to join Dimitri at the edge of the bed. “You know, when I delivered my invitation, you asked me if this was my dream. I didn't answer you then. Because this isn’t all of it. I mean…”

He takes a breath, smiles and continues. “My dream was never just to become _king_. It’s peace, and hope. My dream depends on you, Dimitri. I want to open our borders. I want Almyra and Fódlan to reach out our hands to each other. I can't do it without you.”

Dimitri stares. Claude is looking at him, the same way he did in Derdriu, so many years ago, when he stepped aside to make his sometime rival, sometime friend and sometime saviour the future king of a unified Fódlan. Not even Dimitri had had the courage to conceive of such a thing. It had been Claude all along, Claude who believed in something bigger than all of them, and Dimitri’s heart called inexorably towards that dream.

“So when you ceded the Leicester Alliance to me…”

“I knew you would be the one to make my dream come true,” Claude says. His voice is a quiet, satisfied glow. “And it has, has it not?”

They are so close. It is Claude whose fingers find their way to Dimitri's wrist first, touches the leather cord still looped round it, but it is Dimitri who reaches out to place his hand on Claude's face. It is shaking a little at first, and then Claude sighs and Dimitri’s hand stills.

There is so much he wishes he could say. _I would never have let you die._ It sounds so empty. So full of bravado. Words for a younger self, for their younger selves, who believed in the purity of their own strength, in the crucible that had forged them and the worth of a fight, in all the lives that had been laid down to get them here. They are still avenging those lives. They are doing so by living, every day.

“You still cross too many dangerous bridges for my liking,” says Dimitri.

Claude's laugh is a low, throaty thing. He presses closer, one hand sliding up Dimitri’s torso. “Are you going to be another?”

Dimitri breathes in, sweat and leather and olives, and then he smiles to match Claude. “I am afraid I am dreadfully stable.”

He runs his hand down Claude’s jawline and tips his chin up. Kissing him is not like any courtly romance Dimitri has ever read. It is a throwing down of weapons, a tightness coming undone in his chest, a place Dimitri never knew he missed until he stumbled into it. A place he never knew he could afford to have and hold at all. The Almyran sun is hot upon the windows, on the sheets. Claude’s arm is wrapped around his waist, and he is exhaling heavily, and everything in this moment is real.

And when Dimitri finally dances with Claude, so many years later, it is not under the dazzling lights of a ballroom lit with so many chandeliers and champagne glasses. It is in a back alley that leads to a wild place that smells of sweat and sandalwood, saffron in Claude's hair and the afternoon light on Dimitri's neck.

It is Dimitri’s last morning in Almyra. After breakfast, he will officially take his leave, and soon, he will be back in the harsh Faerghus winter. Soon, he will fasten a deep blue cloak round his shoulders and announce to his people, on the occasion of the Holy Kingdom's Founding Day, that they celebrate the dawn of a new age, an age of peace with their neighbours. That Fódlan’s Throat will be closed no more. That tonight, they shall feast on olive bread and Daphnel stew.

But today, he sweeps Claude into his arms and says, _dance with me_.

And Claude, cheek to cheek with Dimitri, does.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of feelings about these two after Chapter 19.
> 
> come cry with me about Claumitri [@lightveils](https://twitter.com/lightveils)


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